A LITTLE BIT OF A LOT

The major television networks-- ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC --agreed today to suspend pooled coverage of President Donald Trump after the White House yesterday refused to allow CNN entrance.   This is an incredible and extraordinary escalation of the showdown between Trump and the White House press corps.

“Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Bryan Boughton, the Washington bureau chief at Fox News, wrote in a note to television pool members today, which was obtained by The New York Times. (Boughton is the acting chair of the television pool consortium; the networks rotate the chairmanship on a quarterly basis.)

Here is how pool coverage has previously worked:

• They share the news, splitting, financial costs and distributing footage among themselves carried by news organizations worldwide.
• ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX News and NBC rotate covering all White House activities.  CNN was today supposed to follow Trump today at the U.N. General Assembly.
• Of course, print, radio and wire journalists, along with still photographers will still show up.
• CNN, MS NOW and Politico sued the Trump administration over this ban.

Of all the participants, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian will arrive in New York tomorrow for the United Nations General Assembly.

• Iran is a founding member of the UN.
• But the presence of an Iranian delegation on the home turf of a country with which remains at war is unprecedented in recent years.  However, in 1987, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei addressed the General Assembly when he was president, two years before he became Supreme Leader.  He was the one the U.S. and Iran assassinated  on the 28February2026 first strike.
• U.S. sanctions will prevent them from purchasing luxury and other goods.
• Actually there have been no USA strikes on Iran for more than two weeks.

Switching topics to your health, I am scheduled to take my annual flu vaccination in a week.   Why does this matter? I asked Google AI the current status:

Traditional Inactivated Shots: Standard egg-based or cell-based shots widely available for all eligible ages (typically 6 months and older).

High-Dose and Adjuvanted Shots: Specially designed for adults 65 and older to trigger a stronger immune response.

Recombinant Shots (e.g., FluBlok): Egg-free options produced without influenza viruses or eggs, approved for people ages 9 and older.

Nasal Spray (FluMist): A live-attenuated vaccine option that eligible people ages 2 through 49 can use.

mRNA Vaccine (mFLUSIVA): A newer mRNA-based option from Moderna approved for adults 50 and older.[1, 2, 3, 4]

I have generally gone Moderna for my COVID vaccinations, so I'll see if this latest mRNA-based option is available.

• This the first flu vaccine in the U.S. to use messenger RNA technology, the same platform used in COVID shots.
• Late-stage clinical trials found this version to be 27% more effective than a standard flu shot.

• 
  As this type can be made faster, it should be easier to keep up with changing flu strains.
• Moderna's is a trivalent vaccine, targeting two A and one B strains.
• No serious safety problems have surfaced for it.
• There could be injection-site pain, fatigue and headaches, but only mild to moderate.
• Medicare will fully assume cost and most health insurers will cover the vaccination.  Otherwise, the price is from $154 to $171 per dose.

• 
  ONLY available for those 50 and older.
• One huge benefit about living at 15 Craigside is that the pharmacy comes here for mass inoculation.
• CDC recommends getting vaccinated by the end of October.
• Of course, this shot does not protect you from COVID. 
• Which means there must be one coming up, hopefully before my next trip, which will be in December.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary added 1400 new words in its new November 2025 edition.

• Slop:  Named the 2025 Word of the Year, meaning low-quality digital content produced in large quantities by artificial intelligence.
• Looksmaxxing:  an online subculture and self-improvement trend focused on maximizing one's physical attractiveness.

• 
  Meme coin:  a cryptocurrency inspired by internet jokes, viral trends or pop culture rather than a technical purpose or financial utility.
• Cuffing season: fall and winter period when single people feel a strong desire to find a short-term romantic partner to get through the cold weather and holidays together.

This is a huge day for international and national observances:

International Observances

International Day of Peace (World Peace Day)
World Alzheimer's Day
World Gratitude Day
International Ataxia Awareness Day [1, 2]

National & Fun Days

National Chai Day:  not just any tea, but Hindi tea, and there is a masala chai recipe.
National Beef Stroganoff Day
Miniature Golf Day
Batman Day
Pepper Jack Cheese Day

National Pecan Cookie Day
• This is the one that seems to most be celebrated in the U.S.
• Pecan is the state nut of Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, California and Texas.
• Georgia produces the most pecans in the USA.  About a third, and is called the Pecan Capital of the World.
• 
  Here is something you did not know.  Pecan is the only EDIBLE tree nut native to North America.
• Pecan pies are a lot more popular than cookies.  And there is a National Pecan Pie Day:  July 12.

Earth, Wind & Fire Day (celebrating the famous date from the song "September") [1, 2]
• So you ask, why is today EW&F Day?  The first two lines are:

Do you remember

Twenty-first night of September

• Why?  Band founder Maurice White, a co-composer of this song, thought 21st made the song more phonetic than any other date.  Plus, was close to an expected family birth.
• This EW&F day was proposed by the City of Los Angeles in 2019.

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HOMO SAPIENS vs ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

According to Google AI:

The three most profound and existential questions for Homo sapiens center on our origin, our purpose, and our ultimate destiny. These questions have driven human philosophy, science, and religion since the dawn of consciousness. 

Things to think about:

• Philosopher Marin Heidegger asked, why is there something rather than nothing?
• One of the most mind-blowing facts is that Cleopatra lived much closer in time to the launch of the iPhone than to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. 
• Cleopatra died in 30BC, while the Great Pyramid was built around 2560 BC, a gap of just over 2500 years.
• From her birth to the iPhone was only around 2000 years.
• 
  Day vs. Year: A day on Venus (one full rotation on its axis) takes 243 Earth days, while a year on Venus (one orbit around the Sun) takes only 225 Earth days.
• More cosmic perspective: There are more trees on Earth than stars in the Milky Way—about 3 trillion trees compared to roughly 100 to 400 billion stars. However, since farming began, we have halved the number of trees in the world.
• I can go on and on.

Here is an article that poses 5 existential questions, and tries to answer two of them.

• Is there an afterlife?
• 57% to 80% of adults believe.  
• Survey asked people in 22 countries.
• Ranged from 95% in Indonesia to 21% in Japan.  
• A Gallup survey of 61 countries got the 57% low.  
• USA? 56%, just below the world average.
• Older people believed more in an afterlife.
• 2025 Pew poll.

• 
  The numbers are not all the same.
• Indonesia is 85% for both reports.
• But the 56% of the USA is 70% in the Pew survey.
• In the Pew, Sweden was lowest at 38%.  The 21% of Japan is 47% in the Pew.
• Why are some so different?

• 
  Most pollsters don't ask most countries of the Middle East.
• Turkey is #2 in both above polls at 84%, but what about the other Muslim countries?
• According to Google AI, citing other sources like World Values Survey.
• Bangladesh  98.8%
• Turkiye should be 91.8%.
• Pakistan 89.3%

• 
  Existential question #2:  Is the universe finite?  Multiverses are popular in some physics circles, but of course there is no answer.

• 
  #3:  Are we alone in the universe?
• I happen to be a kind of expert in this field, for I spent a summer at the NASA Ames Research Center on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
• Then again, that was half a century ago.
• But there has been no progress.

• 
  Enrico Fermi famously asked, Where is everybody, referring in 150 to extraterrestrials.  For the record, then president Barack Obama also asked, but jokingly, Where are the aliens?
• Absolutely no sign detected yet.

• 
  I think there must be life somewhere out there.
• The Universe is nearly 14 billion years old.
• Life on Earth began less than 4 billion years ago, evolving to us today, only 300,000 years old.
• There are 1 septillion stars (1, followed by 24 zeros) stars out there.
• You would think life of some kind also appeared elsewhere.
• I have a sense about our future.  This will come at the end of this posting.

• 
  #4:  Is there a Higher power?
• More people in the world believe in a God than an afterlife
• While belief has been eroding over time in Western nations, nothing much has changed in the Muslim world.

• 
  Pew Research Center indicated that U.S. adults who believe in God has dropped from 73% in 2007 to only 54% today.  Canada dropped from 80% in the mid-70s to less than 50% today.  In the coming decade, while 4300 churches have already closed recently, of the existing 27,000 faith buildings, 9,000 more are expected to permanently close.  Those already out of service have been converted to restaurants and other uses.
• #5:  Is our existence just a product of a sequence of random events or is this all meant to be?  This depends on your beliefs.

Finally:  WHY ARE WE HERE?  WHERE WILL WE GO?  That was a posting on 12September2021.

• To quote from that posting.

So from left to right, time marched on where basic elements began to form 3 seconds after the BB,  stars/galaxies at around a time of 300 million years.  Now looking backwards from the present, life began to form 3.8 billions ago, dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago and we Homo sapiens evolved 600,000 years ago.  However, anatomically modern Hs appeared around 300,000 years ago.

• 
  Another quote:

Into the next millennium, genetic engineering will re-shape Homo sapiens sapiens and artificial intelligence will begin to dominate:

• 
  Yes, we are now Homo sapiens sapiens.
• While genetic engineering could well improve us humans over time, we have too many limitations, and are prone to extinction.  For one, there is no way that H. s. sapiens will travel long distances to colonize the Universe.
• 
  Artificial Intelligence could well become the next phase of intelligence on Planet Earth.
• If our planet is somehow threatened, existentially, how do we escape?
• Whether it be nuclear warfare or an uncontrollable bio-pandemic, for we seem powerless to attain world peace, technological progress will eventually overcome our ineptitude.

• 
  Some say in a decade, but certainly over a billion years, AI will become the next stage of intelligence.
• For sure, our Sun will enter its Red Giant Phase in about 5 billion years and swell, making life on Earth impossible.
• 
  The vastness of space will be a problem for biological life.  Artificial intelligence should better be able to survive this galactic journey to disseminate life.  Keep in mind that our closest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, is 2.5 million light years away.  Even if we find a way to travel at near the speed of light, it would take a spacecraft more than 2.5 MILLION years to get from here to there. 
• Keep in mind that our Universe will probably be good for another 100 trillion years. Some exotic form of future AI will surely dominate for most of those years.

From The New York Times this morning:

Rolling away: An annual melon race in Xalapa is not only one of Mexico’s most colorful traditions but also one of its most random. See more photos.

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